Why Is It So Difficult For White People To Let Serena Williams Be Great?

When the hashtag #BlackWomenAtWork started trending in March, it was like a free therapy session. Thousands flocked to Twitter to share their horror stories of the utter disrespect, erasure of accomplishments, and cruel criticisms that they have encountered at the office.

I can definitely relate.

Yes, I’ve been blessed to have a decade-long career in journalism and communications, writing the pressing stories that matter to me and my community. During those years, I’ve won a few prestigious awards, met some incredible people that have forever shaped my life, and even got to kiki with Taraji P. Henson at a MAC store. It’s been an awesome ride.

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But I’ve also watched people with less talent get promoted over me, been talked over by white men and women in meetings, had my ideas shut down only to watch colleagues be praised for presenting the same ones, and treated as if I’m not the talented and experienced person my resume says I am.

"I’ve been talked over by both white men and women in meetings and had my ideas shut down only to watch colleagues be praised for presenting the same ones."

I’ve been called a “bitch” by an editor because I didn’t feel comfortable going to lunch with him alone, told that I need to “dummy it down” to make my white colleagues feel better about my work, warned in a review that I don’t need to just be “the Black journalist,” and called “bold” and “hostile” for telling the truth and doing my job.

So to see my timeline blow up with other Black women’s stories was a cathartic reminder that I was not alone. It was also a confirmation that this bias wasn’t a figment of my imagination.

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This is what it means to be Black, female and want to excel in your career.

But even though I have an acute understanding of this collective experience, it’s still difficult for me to fully imagine just how pissed off Serena Williams—THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME—must have been when she heard John McEnroe come for the legacy she’s spent her whole life cultivating.

John McEnroe

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While promoting his second memoir But Seriously this week, the retired tennis player was pressed by NPR to explain why he wrote that Williams was only “the best female player of all time” as opposed to the greatest, period.

McEnroe, who has a history of shaky gender politics and temper tantrums, replied, “If she played the men's circuit she'd be like 700 in the world. That doesn't mean I don't think Serena is an incredible player… and on a given day, Serena could beat some players. But if she had to just play the circuit—the men's circuit—that would be an entirely different story.”

Not missing a beat, Williams had words for the 59-year-old:

Dear John, I adore and respect you but please please keep me out of your statements that are not factually based.

“Dear John I adore and respect you but please keep me out of your statements that are not factually based. I’ve never played anyone ranked ‘there’ nor do I have time. Respect me and my privacy as I’m trying to have a baby. Good day sir.”

While I love a good clap back, it’s infuriating that Williams still has to defend her exceptional athleticism and rightful place in history.

In her dominating 20-plus-year career, Williams has won a whopping 23 Grand Slam single titles, more than any other female player in an Open era, including the great Stefi Graff. Most importantly, she is just one win away from tying Australia’s Margaret Court for the most Grand Slam titles won by a woman ever.

Just look at the 2017 Australian Open. At the age of 35, she won that title, beating every opponent—including her sister Venus—in straight sets, all while being roughly nine or ten weeks pregnant. That alone embodies the definition of G.O.A.T—male or female.

Oh, and as Vanity Fair recently wrote, she has an 85.76 percent winning percentage, 72 tournament wins and record prize and endorsement earnings.

Seven hundred in the world my ass.

It’s infuriating that Williams still has to defend her exceptional athleticism and rightful place in history.

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But McEnroe isn’t Williams’s only dissenter. He represents a cult of white folks that refuse to let this woman be great. Remember in 2015 when the Los Angeles Times asked who deserved to be the Sports Illustrated Athlete of The Year: Williams or that damn horse, American Pharaoh?

"History has taught us that successful and tenacious Black women who refuse to 'know their place' pose a serious threat to the status quo."

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And then there’s the Williams sisters’ 13-year boycott of the Indian Wells tournament after crowds in 2001 booed, hurled racial epithets and accused them of fixing matches. Why? Because Venus had an injury and withdrew from her semifinal match against Serena. According to their father and then-coach Richard Williams, this act of treason had a man so irate that he yelled, “I wish it was '75; we'd skin you alive.”

This is the hefty price Williams has paid for living in her skin and having the audacity to be phenomenal.

And I get it.

It must be excruciating to watch the “mules of the earth” rise up and contribute to society, as opposed to just fleecing it. Us being talented, carefree, and confident as our hair (beads and wigs) blows so effortlessly in the wind must be a sign that the zombie apocalypse is coming.

All jokes aside, history has taught us that successful and tenacious Black women who refuse to “know their place,” especially those that infiltrate and excel in traditionally white spaces, pose a serious threat to the status quo. And they are punished for it.

Just ask former First Lady Michelle Obama, who for eight years endured vicious racist and sexist attacks about her body, her children, her beliefs, and even the work she did for millions of children across this country. Even before her husband was elected in 2008, she was forced to “reintroduce” herself as “kinder,” “gentler” and “more patriotic” to appease white voters. Apparently she was “too angry” for America.

Or California State Senator Kamala Harris, who was recently scolded and talked over twice for asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions tough questions during his Senate hearing—the same thing her white male colleagues did without consequence. A flustered Sessions, who once said he thought the KKK was OK until he learned they smoked pot, claimed Harris was making him “nervous.” Yeah, she’s really scary.

And the list goes on and on.

So whether it’s Centre Court, The White House, Capitol Hill, or beyond, for us to be out here winnin’ is to tip—however so slightly—the scales of power in this country. And that’s what scares the sh*t out of some people and whips white fragility into a frenzy.

But what folks like John McEnroe and my former colleagues need to realize is that you can try your damnedest to diminish this #BlackGirlMagic, but you’ll never really succeed, because we’re a coven that’s only getting stronger by the day.

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